Boréas Technologies has announced the industry’s first solid-state haptic buttons for smartphones. The CapDrive Haptic Buttons reinvent the user interface on the sides of the smartphone by replacing the old mechanical button interface with high-definition, localized haptic buttons that can mimic the exact feel of a mechanical button while also enabling more immersive, realistic, and satisfying touch experiences.

When taking photos, for example, the user gets the same partial button-depress sensation as with a DSLR camera when focusing the lens and the same full button-depress feeling when “snapping” the shot. Going online by phone is easier because the user can browse with one hand by using a haptic slider button that feels like a trackwheel mouse, which even mimics the familiar tick-tick sensation on the fingertip as the pages scroll by. Unlike mechanical buttons, which always feel the same, or the centralized whole-hand vibration effect widely used in non-piezo smartphone haptics, the buttons can be programmed to provide subtle and localized effects on the buttons themselves.

The buttons are a platform based on the Boréas CapDrive BOS0614, a multichannel, ultra-low-power piezo haptic driver with integrated force-sensing.